“What did I tell you?” he exclaimed. “You wouldn’t give me a shirt when I asked you yesterday. Now look what’s happened!”
Deeply annoyed, she looked at Shura and complained.
“Aren’t you ashamed to run about like that? I fear I’ll never drum any sense into you. You always come bothering me when I’m in a hurry.”
Still, it was quite evident that it would not do to let the lad go in tatters. She found a brand new shirt and gave it to Shura somewhat reluctantly, as she had intended giving him one of the old ones, which were not due to arrive from the laundry until the evening.
Shura was overjoyed. The new linen gave him a pleasant sensation, its harsh cold surface tickled the skin most pleasantly. He laughed, and he pranced about the room as he dressed; and his mother was not there to scold him.
II
The school, as always, seemed such a strange place. It was both gay and depressing, and hummed with a kind of unnatural industry. It was gay in the intervals between the lessons, and extremely tedious during the lessons.
The subjects of study were most singular and useless. They concerned: folk, who had died long ago and did no good while they lived, and whom, for some unknown reason, it was necessary to recall after all these centuries, although some of the personages had never even existed; verbs, which were conjugated with something; nouns, which were declined for some purpose or other, though no use could be found for them in living speech; figures, which call for proofs of something which need not be proven at all; and much else, equally inconsequential and absurd. And there was nothing in all this that one could not do without; there was no correlation of facts, there was no straightforward answer to the eternal question: Why and Wherefore?
III
That morning early, in the assembly room, Mitya Krinin asked Shura: “Well, have you brought it?”